About

Alice's Nightmare in Wonderland

£11,144

pledged of £7,950 goal

238

backers

ALICE'S NIGHTMARE IN WONDERLAND is a brand new nightmarish gamebook - a multi-path book, very much in the style of Choose Your Own Adventure and Fighting Fantasy Gamebooks, in which you choose the course of the story - inspired by the works of Lewis Carroll and the Steampunk genre.

To mark the 150th anniversary of 'Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland' I am running this Kickstarter to fund production of ALICE'S NIGHTMARE IN WONDERLAND, which will be illustrated throughout. The book will be professionally typeset, laid out, and published by Snowbooks (who also published YOU ARE THE HERO).

Kickstarter projects work so long as people get to hear about them, so the more people who back ALICE'S NIGHTMARE IN WONDERLAND and help to spread the word, the more likely the project is to succeed and the more impressive the final outcome will be.

ALICE'S NIGHTMARE IN WONDERLAND is set several years after the events of 'Through the Looking Glass'. Alice finds herself back in Wonderland and called upon to save the realm from the increasingly deranged Queen of Hearts. But all is not as it first appears, and soon Alice is battling to save herself from the nightmare that is rapidly overtaking Wonderland.

If you've ever wondered what would have happened if Alice hadn’t drunk from the bottle labelled ‘Drink Me’, or if she hadn’t joined the Hatter, the March Hare, and the Dormouse for tea, now you can find out. In ALICE'S NIGHTMARE IN WONDERLAND, rather than becoming Alice yourself, YOU guide Alice through the fluctuating dream world, deciding which route she should take, which perils to risk, and which of Wonderland’s strange denizens to fight. But be warned – whether Alice succeeds in her quest, or meets a dire end as the nightmare escalates, will be down to the choices YOU make.

ALICE'S NIGHTMARE IN WONDERLAND can be played in not one, but three different ways, thanks to the flexible rules system that has been developed especially for this gamebook.

You can play through the adventure as you would many traditional interactive gamebooks, by rolling dice to determine the outcome of battles and other events. However, you may, if you prefer, ditch the dice and use a traditional pack of playing cards to find out what fate has in store for you during the course of the adventure.

Last of all, if you prefer, you can ditch the dice rolling and card shuffling altogether, and simply enjoy reading through the story. But be warned, even if you choose to enjoy ALICE'S NIGHTMARE IN WONDERLAND this way, success will still be by no means certain.

The character of Alice has five different attributes to keep track of during the adventure - Agility, Logic, Insanity, Combat and Endurance - but rather than being determined randomly, the reader gets to decide where our heroine's strengths and weaknesses lie.

Alice also has two unique special abilities. One is the Curiouser and Curiouser ability, and the other is called The Pen is Mightier Than The Sword, and both allow her to alter the outcome of events in different ways.

ALICE'S NIGHTMARE IN WONDERLAND will be illustrated by Kev Crossley, an artist best known to fans of Fighting Fantasy for providing the gruesome images of zombies that proliferate throughout Ian Livingstone's 30th anniversary FF gamebook Blood of the Zombies.

If you want to know what Kev's artwork for ALICE'S NIGHTMARE IN WONDERLAND is going to be like, imagine, if you will, a cross between his Dark Fairies work, and his paintings of fungi (appropriately enough), with plenty of brass and rivets thrown in.

ALICE'S NIGHTMARE IN WONDERLAND is available to backers of this Kickstarter in four different formats - ebook, paperback, hardback, and a deluxe cloth-bound collector's edition hardback. The book contains an introduction, all the rules you need to play the game, the adventure itself (which runs to 400 numbered sections), a host of illustrations (but precisely how many depends on how much money the Kickstarter raises), and Adventure Sheets for recording your stats as you work your way through the story.

However, the deluxe signed collector's edition will also include artists' sketches, designer's notes, and a brief history of Lewis Carroll's Alice, not to mention decorative endpapers and a ribbon bookmark.

So check out the rewards below, back the project, tell all your friends, and I'll see you down the rabbit-hole...

Thank you for your support.

The following rewards can be added to any other pledges, or selected by themselves (but do not automatically come with copies of the book or other rewards).

Still not sure what comes with which pledge level? Then check out this handy chart:

Having backed ALICE'S NIGHTMARE IN WONDERLAND, you may decide you want to receive more than one copy of the book. Here's how you go about upgrading your pledge.

Pledge at the £20 MARCH HARE level (or above) and simply add £15 to your pledge to receive a second copy of the paperback.

Pledge at the £30 CHESHIRE CAT level (or above) and add £25 to your pledge to receive a second copy of the limited edition hardback, or add £15 to receive a copy of the paperback as well, or even add £40 to receive one extra hardback and one paperback copy.

Pledge at the £50 WHITE KNIGHT level (or above) and add £40 to your pledge to receive a second signed hardback, add £25 to receive a copy of the unsigned hardback, or add £15 to receive a copy of the paperback. And if you really want to, add £80 to receive an additional signed hardback, one unsigned hardback and one paperback.

Pledge at the £100 QUEEN OF HEARTS level or above (or indeed at the £80 DODO level) and add £80 to your pledge to receive an additional premium, signed, collector's hardback (so that you can enjoy reading one and keep the other one in pristine condition for your collection) and an additional set of the art prints, add £40 to receive an additional normal signed hardback, add £25 to receive a copy of the unsigned hardback, or add £15 to receive a copy of the paperback. And if you want one of each book reward, add a total of £160 to your original pledge.

Also, if you back the project at the £70 UNICORN pledge level (or above) you can purchase an additional set of art prints by adding £15 to your original pledge.

Risks and challenges

I am an experienced author with more than 50 published books to my name, including 15 gamebooks. As a result you can be sure that I will see this project through to the end.

I have a formal contract with award-winning UK publisher Snowbooks Ltd to publish this book, pending the outcome of this Kickstarter.

Delivery of YOU ARE THE HERO was delayed, quite simply because the more people I spoke to the more I discovered I needed to include in the book, which grew from a 30,000 word project to one 100,000 words long. That won't happen with ALICE'S NIGHTMARE IN WONDERLAND.

There were also some issues with postage with YOU ARE THE HERO. To minimise any potential problems this time, any additional postage costs have been included in the relevant pledge levels (and will appear when you select them). However, if you are backing in the UK, post and packing is free!

Kickstarter is not a store.

Pledge £25 or more
About $32

♠ KING OF HEARTS ♠
Add £25 (or more) to your pledge to purchase a set of ALICE'S NIGHTMARE IN WONDERLAND-themed dice and playing cards. (Each set contains two dice and one pack of playing cards. You may buy additional sets at £25 each.)

Kickstarter is not a store.

Pledge £50 or more
About US$ 64

♦ JABBERWOCK ♠
Add £50 (or more) to your pledge and you can interview author Jonathan Green about his work and ALICE'S NIGHTMARE IN WONDERLAND for your blog, website, podcast, radio show or YouTube channel.

Kickstarter is not a store.

Pledge £80 or more
About $103

♥ DODO ♣
You will receive everything that comes with the QUEEN OF HEARTS pledge level, but you will also receive a pre-release play-test copy of ALICE'S NIGHTMARE IN WONDERLAND, and be credited in the front of the book as an official play-tester.

Kickstarter is not a store.

Pledge £500 or more
About $643

♠ DUCHESS ♥
Add £500 (or more) to your pledge and have your portrait painted into a scene from ALICE'S NIGHTMARE IN WONDERLAND
by a top artist. You will receive a print of the artwork which will also appear in the deluxe collector's edition of the book.